The Government has been caught out engaging in more te reo bashing.
From TVNZ:
Education Minister Erica Stanford has imposed a near total ban on Māori in new additions to a series of books used to teach five-year-olds to read.
An Education Ministry report shows Stanford decided in October last year to exclude all Māori words except for characters’ names from any new books in the Education Ministry’s Ready to Read Phonics Plus (RtRPP) series.
The paper showed the decision was driven by concern Māori words were confusing for children learning to read English though evidence of that was mixed.
Stanford told RNZ the decision affected only 12 books that would finish the series, after which the series, including 27 books with Māori words, could be reprinted.
The ministry’s report said: “Under this option, we would not include kupu Māori in all phases of the RtRPP scope and sequence for any future books. The 13 RtRPP books currently in development do not contain any kupu Māori, apart from character names.”
According to Erica this was all an unfortunate misunderstanding and no slight to the indigenous language of Aotearoa was intended. She also said that the decision was the middle position between conflicting advice. Obviously some advisor wanted Te Reo banned completely from early readers. I wonder if it was this advisor who has railed against all things Māori for some time?
Is this an innocent misunderstanding that is not intended to slight Te Reo Māori?
The trouble is that it looks like a pattern for this Government and not a one off event.
Who can forget the Government or Ministers:
- Getting rid of Te Reo names for Government Departments.
- Cancelling extra pay for public servants learning Te Reo.
- Making English an official language, as if it wasn’t already.
- Chris Bishop losing his cool at the Aotearoa Music Awards when there was a visible display of tino rangatiratanga.
- Paul Goldsmith removing a te reo greeting from an official Matariki invitation.
- Cutting $30 million of funding for the training of teachers in Te Reo.
- Winston Peters repeated railing against the use of the word “Aotearoa”.
- The removal of traffic control stop-go signs in te reo Māori.
The basic problem is that many te reo words have entered into the local language and are integral parts of current communication. Excluding them at any stage reduces their relevance as well as the mana of Te Reo.
The words in the journal complained of include wharenui, karakia, kai, koro, karanga and hongi. The words relate to important aspects of a visit to a Marae. These should be parts of all of our kids vocabularies.
Bruce Jepsen, the president of Te Akatea, the Māori Principals’ Association has been scathing about the change.
He said:
Make no mistake, our members see this move as an act of white supremacy. It’s an act of racism. It’s a determined act to recolonize our education system, and it sends a very dangerous message and is immensely harmful and it’s utterly shameful.”
Stanford’s liberal credentials should be damaged by this. If she wishes to be National’s next leader she will have a lot of explaining to do.
Removing Te Reo Māori from early readers on the basis of “confusion” is not supported by any credible research. It’s a political choice dressed up as pedagogy.
The academic consensus for over forty years is clear: bilingual and multilingual children are not “confused” by learning more than one language. At most, they may temporarily have slightly smaller vocabularies in each individual language early on, but their total vocabulary is often larger, and the difference disappears quickly as they develop.
The research is extensive and consistent:
Decades of evidence point in one direction: learning multiple languages increases comprehension, problem-solving, and reading ability in all languages a child uses.
This is simple Linguistics101 level stuff . But hey, why follow actual evidence and research when you can just use your feels to address pressing policy problems.
Even more galling is that is not new territory for New Zealand’s education system.
For decades, Ministry of Education guidance and curriculum frameworks: including Ka Hikitia and Te Aho Arataki Marau mō te Ako i te Reo Māori, have recognised that introducing kupu Māori in early literacy strengthens engagement, cultural identity, and cross-linguistic literacy skills.
The Ready to Read series itself has historically included te reo Māori in contextually meaningful ways. Not just as token words, but integrated into stories that reflect New Zealand’s bicultural heritage. That practice has been aligned with both domestic evidence and international best practice for bilingual literacy.
And this is not just about the classroom.
New Zealand English has undergone significant change over the past few decades, incorporating large numbers of Māori, and to a lesser extent, Pasifika, words, as well as subtle phonological shifts.
Everyday vocabulary such as whānau, kai, hui, kōrero, and mana is widely understood by New Zealanders of all backgrounds. Pretending these words are somehow alien or “confusing” in early readers ignores the lived reality of the language children already hear at home, in their communities, and in the media.
Removing te reo Māori now is not “erring on the side of caution.” It is a deliberate departure from the Ministry’s own prior evidence-based approach and from the direction of New Zealand English itself : a direction that reflects our shared cultural reality.
If this were genuinely about pedagogy, it would be doubling down on what works, not cutting it out.
Thanks for your comment. Worthy of a guest post!
I’m learning and autism and ADHD. I seem to have an ever increasing number of younger family members being diagnosed, only to discover that I also have autism+adhd…
Anyway, learning a second language as a child may help with executive functioning with an ADHD child, and improving the communication skills of autistic children…
So back to te reo, it really does seem to be a great idea for many reasons including being a part of our culture and identity
Excellent points Res Publica.
We have a Minister of Education following a hand picked group of people who refer to education as an industry.
She like Luxon Seymore and Peters are full of hubris, certain they are correct.
Erica Stanford is in the politically enviable position of
an untouchable 20,000 electoral majority,
hot-housed under Murray McCully,
telegenic,
no competition or even interest in Cabinet for the portfolio,
unconstrained by any teaching or even leadership experience to worry any consequence about a decision …
… with an Absent Dad PM quite happy happy to let her do the ideological work of scything through one of the last of the large unions which are the base of the remaining left.
The Labour equivalent would be Ingrid Leary being made Minister of Police and taking all their Tasers and mace and guns, with compulsory nail painting, hair braiding, and a jandals-only patrol policy.
IE there is no left equivalent possible.
The crazy thing is, that may actually be a better law and order policy than National's. Or at least more effective at addressing the root causes of crime and returning to policing by consent.
Besides, as every Kiwi kid knows, the risk of being tasered is nothing compared to the near certainty that if you got caught acting up, you’d get the jandal.
I don't get it.
If the original books could be kept as-is (with te reo), why do the last 12 need it removed?
Culture War Opportunity too good to miss wether she or the altas collective came up with it.
Gotta flood that zone
Stanford just does what the NZ Initiative tells her.
Agree, Andrew, and more here on where she's getting her ideas from, including a correct guess from Micky Savage: https://e-tangata.co.nz/comment-and-analysis/ideology-is-pushing-maori-knowledge-out-of-the-curriculum/
Note how early she set the committee up. They're moving her arms and legs, no less.
As part of my life as a traveller..I have/am open to .. many casual contacts with strangers ..
I am pakeha ..and I look pakeha..and I can tell you that with any other pakeha (of a certain/my age)..I steel myself for the probing casual racism drop from them .
..and it is depressing how widespread that casual racism is amongst pakeha of a certain/my age…
So..to me the answer to the question asked in the headline is quite straightforward..
This government is tapping into that deep well of racism out here ..as a constituency they can pander to…can get support from..
It's an act of political cynicism (pun intended)..
..and perhaps it's worst 'sin'…is how uncaring they are of our social fabric…and the bonds built between maori and those pakeha who are not stained by that deep/knee-jerk racism…
So..fuck them..!
..eh..?
I leave English English to the English – the days of received pronunciation of the YA stations of old are long gone. The phrases in Maori used by TV and Radio announcers assist out tourist market, but are also becoming used by many New Zealanders, and are valuable additions to our language in developing inclusivity and acceptance of others in our schools and communities. But there are a lot of dialects of English around the globe, and New Zealand English has developed its own path – we have largely lost much of our domestic accents (eg Taranaki and Southland) just as English English largely lost provincial accents (Berkshire, Glasgow), but there are still some that retain those influences. I think of Aussie English as having picked up more from America than us, but we have picked more from the indigenous people of our land than other English dialects have – it should however be recognised that "New Zealand English" or "The New Zealand language" while recognisable to those in other lands, is a distinctive dialect, or for some a separate language. Language is of course more than an accent – the choice of words tells us about implicit bias, and racism, and for creating separation of people – currently as far as this government is concerned Trump, Atlas, landlords, political donors, and shareholders are "us" – Maori and beneficiaries and employees are "Other," small business owners are ;useful idiots, Te Pati Maori and the Greens are enemies, and everything that goes wrong is the fault of the previous Labour government. Atlas does not speak Maori; but Seymour speaks it only to pretend that the government is treating all New Zealanders equally.
(gasp…!)..let the paragraph be your new friend…
The long term underlying strategy is to continue to deliver small and irrelevant policy that sends a clear message to Pakeha voters that Maori are being put back in their place.
The double bonus is that this is going to provoke and radicalize Te Pati Maori and deliver the key to winning in 2026. An angry and unhinged TPM will be shoved into voters faces every day once the election campaign starts. NZ Herald, ZB, Garner, the Platform will be wall to wall with white outrage at TPM activities.